Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans (2021)

Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans (2021)

3/10

Starring the voices of

Emile Hirsch

Lexi Medrano

Charlie Saxton

Kelsey Grammer

Fred Tatasciore

 

Directed by Johane Matte, Francisco Ruiz Velasco and Andrew Schmidt

 

I guess I probably expected too much. When you’re watching a TV series, there’s a lot of time to build characters and create deep wells of suspense. But when you’ve only got an hour and a half to wrap up everything and everyone you’ve built up over three seasons, I guess it can be hard.

What I believe Guillermo Del Toro and the team did here was take ideas they had for a fourth season and cram them all into this movie. There’s no character depth for the new faces we meet, and the beginning doesn’t give you the needed buildup to explain what’s happening now or where we are in the story.

I liked the idea that other things had happened since the last time we saw Jim and his friends, but we were thrown straight into an end-of-the-world scenario. At one point, I felt overwhelmed by everything going on.

The moment you catch your breath in this movie, you’re introduced to the new foes—three magical beings known as the Arcane Order. Early on, they stop Jim and destroy his magical Trollhunter amulet. One of them, Nari, eventually joins the good guys, while the other two hunt her down to use her power to raise the Titans and bring about the end of the world.

The movie wastes no time. The other two members of the Arcane Order attack a train carrying Nari, along with her allies Douxie and Archie. Jim and his now larger team of friends rush to their aid. They had a plan involving a device that disables magic, but things didn’t go as planned. Nari (or rather, her body with Douxie’s spirit inside) was captured.

Unlike the others fighting the Arcane Order, Jim is now just a regular human and gets seriously injured. When the Arcane duo discovers the deception—that Nari’s spirit isn’t in her body—they break the spell and swap her back. Before leaving, Nari gives Jim and the team a clue about how to remake the amulet.

Now, this is where my brain starts overthinking.

Why did she wait until now to give them this clue?

She could’ve shared this information earlier, which would’ve helped Jim get his amulet working again. But no, the world has to be on the brink of destruction, and she has to be miles away, leaving them to figure it all out while also trying to save her and then save the world.

The best way to sum this movie up is: too much happens, way too fast, for it to really matter. I didn’t have an issue with the ending—which kind of undoes everything that’s happened since season one—but I feel the movie could’ve been better with a little more focus and fewer characters.